2008

Cat Greenleaf serves as lifestyle contributor for WNBC, providing human-interest reports for the station’s morning program “Today In New York” and other News 4 New York programs. Her amazing reports are also featured on NBC’s owned and operated television stations and the weekend NBC “Today” show.Prior to joining WNBC, Greenleaf worked at NYC-TV, where she served as entertainment
correspondent for “NY360” and hosted and produced various programs for the station including, “On The Prowl with Cat Greenleaf” (a weekly series on the culture and characters of New York City); “9.99” (a guide to spending under $10 a day in the city); and “Backdrop NYC”(a showcase for independent films made in New York). Greenleaf hosted The Travel Channel’s “Vacation Home Search” and “Chasing History Home.” She was also a daily roving craft reporter on the DiY Network’s “Craftlab.”
——————————————————————————-

Wendy Gillette / CBS News
Mentors: Bernadette Pauley & Al Ducharme

Wendy Gilletteis a phenomenal television reporter and anchor with more than 10 years experience. She currently freelance reports for CBS NewsPath, providing reports for all the CBS affiliates in the country, News 12 Long Island and News 12 Westchester. She is also an anchor for News 12. She received her bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and her master’s degree from Boston University.
——————————————————————————-

Debbie Nigro / FirstWivesWorld.com
Mentor: Mark Anthony Ramirez

Debbie Nigro is one of the founding partners of First Wives World, LLC, and its “Chief Executive Girlfriend”. Her insightful, “tell it like it is” videos, posts and blogs are viewed and enjoyed by millions of divorced women daily on www.firstwivesworld.com. She is also a
consultant to producers of “The First Wives Club Musical,” which is scheduled to premier on Broadway in 2008. A pioneer in self-syndicated, female-targeted talk radio programming, Nigro built and ran
her own radio and television syndication company from 1993 to 2000. During this time, she developed a reputation for creating award-winning branded programming with creative product integration. Her radio shows and vignettes aired in over 450 markets. Nigro’s media experience includes radio, pod casting, television, publishing, television shopping, new product launches, program creation, breakthrough public relations concepts, event and media sponsorships, and “unique” strategic introductions and alliances..
——————————————————————————-

Heather Kovar / News 12
Mentor: Tim Krompier

Heather Kovar is the blogger for the New York Press Club. www.newyorkpressclub.org/blogs. She is also Morning Anchor and Reporter for News 12 Connecticut. This year she won a New York Emmy in the category of On-Camera Talent: Commentator /Editorialist. She began her career in Dallas, and has worked across upstate New York. She has also freelanced for Reuters in New York City presenting updates from the Nasdaq. Heather lives in New York City and keeps in touch with her family by keeping a blog for her
dog. It has also won awards.
——————————————————————————-

Rob Hoell / WPIX
Mentor: Billy Bingo

Rob Hoell joined the CW11 News Team in 2005 as the Long Island reporter for the CW11 news at Ten. Since that time he has been honored with 2 FOLIO awards for his outstanding reporting and a New York Press Club Award for Best Anticipated New Story for his coverage of “Flight 800 Ten Years Later.”

Hoell grew up on Long Island and has been covering news there since the late 90’s. He got his start at WLNY and worked for News 12 Long Island and Westchester.

Hoell graduated from New York Institute of Technology with a Masters Degree in communications. He lives in Nassau County, where he enjoys sailing with his wife and 2 children.
——————————————————————————

Nikki Egan / MSNBC

Nikki Egan is an Emmy Award – winning senior producer at MSNBC. She’s hoping something else will happen in her lifetime so that won’t be the first line of her obituary. Not that she doesn’t like MSNBC (she loves it), but she’s milked that Emmy line for a while and her friends are tired of it. As a producer, she’s been right in the middle of some of the big stories of the past (redacted) years, including the 2000 ballot debacle in Florida. (Don’t ask to see her hanging chads. She’s shy.) Besides attempting standup comedy, Nikki also runs around the park occasionally, dances better than Britney at the VMAs (who doesn’t?), eats her vegetables and sleeps. She’d like to thank Kermit the Frog, Walter Cronkite and Mary Richards for inspiring her to become a journalist.

————————————————————————————————————————————

Ellis Henican / Newsday / Fox News

Ellis Henican is a staff columnist for Newsday, an electrifying political analyst at the Fox News Channel and the voice of “Stormy Waters” on the prime-time Cartoon Network series, Sealab 2021. Henican’s award-winning newspaper column — “a personal, opinionated look at the news of the day” – appears in the paper’s front section every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Before taking on his current assignment, Henican wrote Newsday’s subway column, leading the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Union Square train wreck. At Fox, Henican appears frequently on “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hannity & Colmes,” “Fox & Friends” and many of the network’s other programs. He also fills in as a guest host. Fox viewers know Henican for his lively take on the news and for dissecting complex issues in an engaging, understandable way. His work has been recognized with the Meyer Berger Award for Distinguished Writing About New York City, the National Clarion Award for Column Writing and shares of two Pulitzer Prizes for spot news.